


Golden

by hatrickane (dandelionwhiskey)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Anxiety, Bullying, Genius!Tyler, M/M, Math Kink, Pining, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionwhiskey/pseuds/hatrickane
Summary: Tyler grew up smart - too smart. Smart enough to know that eventually, he'd have to hide it if he wanted to fit in. Sometimes, though, he slipped up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 110% inspired by this picture.  
> 

Tyler wakes up with dry eyes and a dry mouth and, shit, he fell asleep in his contacts.

He hasn’t left his contacts in overnight for years, and definitely never when they were on the road. He had a routine. No matter how tired, no matter how drunk he was or how late it got, he’d stumble into the bathroom to remove his contacts and chug a big, cold glass of water.

He’d fucked up his routine.

Tyler shuffles to the bathroom, squinting, and removes his dry contacts from his red eyes. He drops them in their solution and sighs. He rubs his fist against his cheek, trying to scratch an itch he can’t reach, and turns the shower onto hot. Maybe the moisture will help.

It doesn’t. Tyler has to make his way down to team breakfast with his big, awkward, square glasses that aren’t exactly his prescription because he hasn’t had them corrected in years.

A slight murmuring precedes the real chirps. Tyler frowns, disconcerted, as he takes his place next to Jamie.

“Yo, Seggy,” says someone. Tyler isn’t sure because he’s staring at his empty plate. “You a hipster now?”

“Those aren’t hipster glasses,” says someone. “Those are _nerd_ glasses.”

Tyler laughs along with the jeering, smiles, tilts his glasses up and down by the stems. The laughter increases and Jamie jostles his shoulder.

“You okay, dude?” He asks around a mouthful of some kind of orange fruit. Melon, maybe.

Tyler just grins and him and shoves him back. “Never better.”

///

Tyler’s five and it’s his first year of kindergarten. He shows up to class with his blue and white backpack, proudly representing the Maple Leafs. The classroom smells like wax and clean paper and Tyler’s glasses sit heavy on his nose. They’re a little too big for his small face but Tyler can see the pictures on the chalkboard even from the back of the classroom.

“You’re a nerd,” says a girl at recess. It’s not mean. She taps her face where she is not wearing glasses. “Nerds wear glasses.”

Tyler blinks at her.

///

“One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty one…”

“Tyler.”

“Thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine-”

“Segs!”  
  
Tyler comes back to reality. It’s second period of some CBJ game and Tyler is nervous. He’s playing loose and uncoordinated and Jamie keeps giving him these looks. “What?” He asks, snaps, too harsh.

“What are you saying?” Jamie says, brows tight together in confusion. “What are those numbers?”

“Nothin’,” says Tyler flexing his fingers on his stick. It’s his shift and he can leave Jamie’s confusion behind.

///

Tyler’s eight and tracing spirals and spirals and spirals.

His mother is sitting at a parent-teacher conference and they’re saying something about how Tyler is _gifted_ but Tyler just draws a seashell and tries to listen.

“We think Tyler might be qualified to skip the third grade,” says Ms. Baumgartner.

Tyler’s mom is radiating pride as they ask him questions; and Tyler pushes his glasses up his nose. The kids in his class already call him a geek, skipping up to a whole new group of kids who are older and meaner isn’t exactly what he wants to do.

But he does it.

///

“Drinks are on Segs,” shouts Eaves, clapping him on the shoulder.

Tyler buys rounds, and rounds. Everyone’s keyed up and happy after a string of wins and Tyler is counting. It’s not something he’s thinking about, not really, but he’s adding the bill in his head as he goes. Calculating his tip, recalculating. It’s just there.

///

Tyler’s in Switzerland and Kaner is the most interesting person he’s ever met.

He’s loud and focused and drunk and _smart_ and Tyler didn’t know that was acceptable. Kaner can play beer pong while rattling off hockey stats for every guy in the NHL. He knows who shoots left and who needs to work on their faceoffs and who had point streaks when. He also knows how to sink his ping-pong ball into the last cup and win it.

“How do you know all that?” Tyler asks, buzzed and pressed up against Kaner on the couch while they watch Swiss television.

“Mm?” mumbles Kaner. He blinks at Tyler a few times, wearing a lazy smile, and shrugs. “It’s just easy to remember if you pay attention.”

Tyler can identify with that.

“Nerd,” he says to Kaner. The word is foul on his tongue but Kaner just laughs, cups Tyler’s cheeks, shakes Tyler’s head a little until his brain rattles pleasantly in his skull.

“If bein’ a nerd makes me a better player, I’ll take it, Segsy.” He’s so open and relaxed and Tyler is bursting with so much affection that he feels like he might explode.

“I’m smart,” Tyler confesses. Kaner’s smile disappears and his hands drop from Tyler’s face and Tyler is so angry at himself for dimming that light. The look Kaner is giving him is full of devastation and Tyler wants to shield himself from it.

“I know you’re smart,” Kaner says quietly. “I wasn’t - I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

Tyler’s not sure what Kaner’s getting at. “No, I mean, I’m _smart_.”

Kaner’s face melts into something more like confusion, which Tyler can work with. “You’re drunk,” Kaner guesses, but Seguin just shakes his head.

“I’m good with numbers,” he explains. “Math. Well,” he purses his lips, “arithmetic. Not, like, geometry or theory or anything. I can count.”

Patrick peers at him. “So?”

“So, what?”

“So,” Kaner goes on, “why are you all weird about it?”

Tyler shrinks. He folds in on himself and reaches up to push at glasses that aren’t there. “I, ah,” he says, “didn’t have the greatest time in school. Hockey helped a little, but I’m. Uh.”

“You had a hard time fitting in,” says Kaner. Tyler doesn’t need to nod for Patrick to understand. “What about Boston?”

“No one knows,” Tyler says softly. He almost told Brownie a couple of times, and it slipped out to Marchy once but Brad hadn’t totally understood and Tyler was able to reel it back in. He just didn’t totally trust them to be cool about it.

Kaner sighs. “You’ll find a place, Segs,” he says earnestly. It makes Tyler ache all over. He thought he’d found it on the Bruins, but he figures he might still have some searching to do. Patrick pulls him into a hug and Tyler wraps himself up in it, breathes against him, and notices when Pat’s fingers flex on his shoulder blades.

“You wanna-”

“Yeah, okay,” says Kaner, and Tyler finds out he tastes like chocolate and his eyes are bluest right after he comes.

///

Tyler gets traded that summer.

///

The kids in the grade four class are very wary of Tyler. He knows the answers more quickly than he should and isn’t shy about answering them. He plays hockey, but he likes numbers, and his is an anomaly they’re wholly unfamiliar with.

Naturally, they don’t respond well.

Tyler comes home with some bruises and his glasses scuffed. His mom hugs him tightly and asks if he wants to return to grade three with his peers.

“It won’t matter,” says Tyler from behind the icepack pressed to his cheek. He’s made up his mind. He had to change if he ever wanted friends, a normal life. “Can I get contacts instead of glasses?”

///

Tyler first hooks up with a guy his sophomore year of high school. He’s partying, playing hockey, doing poorly in school and he’s more social than he’s ever been. His cheekbones are more pronounced, his scruff of a beard is coming in, and he feels handsome and popular.

He’s half in the bag. He’s been taking pulls off a whiskey bottle all night and he smoked a bowl with Jessica in the basement, so everything is fuzzy and warm. A hand claps down onto his shoulder and Tyler hazily looks up to see Eric, all grins, teeth and dimples.

“I got some coke,” he says, wagging his eyebrows. “Wanna try?”

“Fuck, yeah,” says Tyler, and he follows Eric into the master bedroom and locks the door.

They don’t make it to the drugs. As soon as Tyler’s ass hits the mattress, just a little too close to Eric, the air in the room changes. Eric’s fingers slide against his cheek and Tyler clumsily jerks forward. The kissing is awkward and so, so hot. Tyler pushes Eric down on the bed and climbs on top of him, bracketing him in with his knees.

He wants to keep him there. He kisses deep and his breath hitches when Eric takes his shirt off. They paw and rub and move against each other, fueled by booze and unbearable arousal. Tyler comes in his pants with his dick shoved up against Eric’s thick thigh and he wishes he could suspend himself in that moment.

Eric’s on the hockey team and they keep hooking up for awhile. They’re not in love, but Tyler learns how to deepthroat an uncut cock and how to find his own prostate. Eric is big and sexy and fucks Tyler within an inch of his life whenever they get a moment alone.

Presumably, he did the same with his girlfriend.

Tyler’s family moves halfway through junior year and Tyler has to switch schools. He doesn’t bother telling anyone.

///

Tyler’s in Jamie’s side of their hotel suite when he sees the pen and paper. Written on the pad, underneath the hotel stationery, are numbers.

_1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55_

Tyler brushes his fingers in a spiral over the numbers.

“I was trying to figure it out,” Jamie says from behind him. He’s got a towel around his waist and his hair is all wet and matted down. Tyler wants to press up against him. “You say those numbers all the time.”

“It’s the Fibonacci sequence,” Tyler murmurs, eyes stuck on the curve of Jamie’s damp, bare hips.

“What?” Jamie’s laughing a little, confused, as he moves over to the drawers to get clothes. Tyler realizes, belatedly, what he’d said.

“It’s a ratio,” Tyler says sheepishly. He hadn’t meant to tell him, but Jamie was getting dressed in front of him and outside of the locker room, Tyler had a difficult time not sexualizing asses that firm.

“A ratio,” Jamie repeats. He’s in boxer briefs now and he goes to stand next to Tyler. He’s got goosebumps from the hotel air conditioner and Tyler wonders why the hell he can’t put some pants on.

He picks up the paper and points at the number. “Each number is the sum of the previous two numbers,” he explains. “One and one is two, two and one is three, three and two is five.”

“Oh,” says Jamie. “Oh, I get it.” But there’s something there that Jamie doesn’t get, Tyler knows. He doesn’t get why Tyler cares about this numbers, why this sequence should mean anything to him. And it’s planting all kinds of doubts in his mind about who he thought Tyler was.

“It’s dumb,” Tyler shrugs. Deflects.

But Jamie won’t have it. He shakes his head and points at the numbers. “It’s not dumb,” he says. “It’s cool. You can add that fast? Awesome.”

Jamie’s looking at Tyler like he’s so proud of him, like the math doesn’t put him off in the slightest. “When I’m anxious, I see how high I can go.” He offers this little bit of information and Jamie’s face lights up, bright and happy, and Tyler doesn’t know what to do. No one has ever looked at him this way before.

“I hope you don’t have to go very high,” Jamie says, like that’s a normal thing to say. Tyler laughs in exhaustion, in relief, and reaches out to grab Jamie’s arms. He squeezes once and drops them back, afraid that if he kept his hands there any longer that Jamie would crumble under the weight of his affection.

Jamie’s still smiling and Tyler has no idea what he did to deserve this. “Not that high,” Tyler says, “not anymore.”

“What is it?” Jamie asks, nodding back to the sheet of paper.

Tyler tilts his head. “What’s what?”

“The ratio. What’s the, like, rule or whatever? Does it explain something?”

Tyler’s face feels hot as he flips the paper over, picks up the pen, and draws. He’s done it a thousand times before, has it down to a perfect science. His spiral starts small and expands out until he reaches the edge of the paper, each gap bigger than the last.

“Oh,” says Jamie. He points at one of the spaces. “Twice as big. I get it.”

Jamie’s not exactly right but he’s trying and Tyler’s heart is full in his chest, thumping rapidly. He watches Jamie trace the spiral with his fingertips and Tyler is light-headed with the intimacy of it. “If you want to know more,” says Tyler, “I could teach you.”

Jamie’s nodding. “Yeah, cool,” he agrees, and it’s truthful and clean of presumption.

Tyler kisses him.

It’s incredible, the way Jamie’s arms just come up and around him and tug him in. Tyler marvels at it, how easy it is to get Jamie to part his lips and kiss him deeply. It’s a strong, abiding kiss, all intention and fresh air. When they part, Tyler doesn’t dare move too far away.

“You should wear your glasses more often,” Jamie says, thumbing at the ridge of Tyler’s brow. “You look good in them.”

///

Later, he’s on top of the tucked hotel sheets while Jamie dozes loudly next to him. His bare back is soft under Tyler’s fingertips, leaving goosebumps in the trails of the spirals Tyler draws on his skin. He’s wet with Jamie’s spit and red with Jamie’s grip, sore, smiling.

For the first time, Tyler feels like he belongs.

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on [tumblr!](http://hatrickane.tumblr.com)


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